Phinally!

After a four hour drive to Greensburg, PA with Chem, hanging out for and hour and a half at his place, and an eight hour Greyhound bus ride, that was of course off schedule, I can finally say that I made it back home! After that trip I feel that it's safe to say that I went to hell and back to get home, especially since I had to go through Pittsburgh. Now as much as I would love to talk about my hatred for Pittsburgh, that is a discussion for another day.

Let me tell you just how awful that trip was. The guy in front of me couldn't resist but to recline his chair all the way back, and not only did he ignore my brutal but kind request, he also would rock back and forth. The nerve of some people! There was also a woman who would frequently walk to the front of the bus just to ask the bus driver unneccesary questions. She would even hold conversations with other passengers and stand in the middle of the aisle. However, I must thank this woman, because when she was two people away from getting to me I pretended to be asleep, therefore causing me to fall asleep.

Now, I must enjoy this time home because if things fall into place I may not becoming back to the City of Brotherly Love for awhile, at least until 2014. So I must enjoy my time spent with all of my family and friends. I have to take advantage of forcing my mom to take me to my cheesesteak place, Jim's, which by the way delivers to out of state. Sadly the order has to be a minimum of $32, but if you and a group of people would want to digest a piece of heaven, let me know! I have to enjoy and take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way.

Hope you guys all do the same. Have a good break people!

Reputation

The other day when talking to Chem we were bouncing around ideas of how Sigep could expand our name in not only the ONU community but in the Ada community as well. By expanding our name, by helping others and doing positive things in the community, we are building our reputation in a positive way. And by building our reputation we in our community we are forming strong relationships with our community as well. After the conversation I couldn't help but notice the striking similarity to this weeks reading of Measure What Matters.

This week Paine talked about how important it is to build a solid and positive reputation with your public. The worst your reputation is the more likely you are to catch negativity, such as people knocking at your door wanting to shut you down or sue you. She also made a connection to Grunig and Dozier, from the democratic party, who made a statement stressing reputation:

"Communication with publics' before decisions are made is most effective in resolving issues and crises because it helps managers to make decisions that are less likely to produce consequences that publics make into issues and crises. If public relations staff does not communicate with its publics until an issue or crisis occurs,the chance of resolving the conflict is slim."

Having a good reputation and strong relationships gives a good back bone for if a crisis occurs. Your community becomes your support system, helping you in the event of a crisis. Similar to the SeaWorld situation. Remember,  it can take years to build a solid reputation but it can only seconds to destroy it.

Do the Creep

Okay, so has anyone else realized how creepy and annoying Facebook is getting? It's starting to remind me of that one family member, usually uncles, that no one is really fond of and everone has to keep an on at family togethers. Or maybe that's just my family, so try to put yourself in my shoes.

At first you could see who was online by seeing the green dot on your messenger list. Then came the ability to see how long ago they were online, but now things are out of hand. The other day when I was on the site on my laptop I could who was online and via what medium, mobile or web. So now the, "sorry I can only use Facebook on my computer" is no longer an option, but again that could be just me.

It also bothers me that people can now see that I saw their posts or message and also when. Again, another excuse is not out of the window further obligating me to respond to people I may not want to talk to to begin with at a faster pace, thanks for that Zuckerberg.

I'm now waiting on the day when people will not only see how many people view their page, but can also see who has and how many times each individual has done so. Soon after that you may start to see who viewed your posts and pictures,

whether the liked or commented on it or not.

I dont know how you guys feel, but Facebook just needs to calm down. Or go back to the way it used to be. Whichever is easier.

Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You

One thing that stuck out to me in this week's reading of Measuring What Matters Paine talked about keeping a good relationship with your local community. As Paine said "Communities with which you have good relationships can defend you in crisis." With that she used the example of when the killer whale killed the trainer the at SeaWorld, PETA attempted a "Free the Whales" campaign on FaceBook against SeaWorld. However, thankfully for SeaWorld they established a solid relationship with their customers and their Facebook community so the campaign wasn't successful.

This reminded me of many personal situations. One specifically was my when I got in my first school fight in fourth grade. I didn't do too bad in the fight, and by that I mean I won by a land slide, and was had to meet with the Vice Principle with the other kid the next day. Before the meeting, a couple of people were pretty "anti-Darnell" wanting me to get the suspension, even though the fight wasn't my fault. But, just like in PR, in real life you will  hit crisis and the unexpected. However, I had a SeaWorld moment of my own, and thanks to my good reputation with the teachers and the majority of my peers I walked away clean and the other kid got the suspension.

If you do what your job correctly such as respond to your customers and community in real-time, keep them up to date, and deal with crisis in a swift and professional fashion you'll build a good relationship and reputation with them. That's how they can help you in crisis, if one person has an issue with you and tries to bring negative PR to your company, your community can come to your aid and it'll backfire on the one rebel. I think that is one of the most important things to take from this chapter.

Mobile Blogging

Last week, and once before if I am not mistaken,  I mentioned that I wrote my blogs on my Galaxy phone out of excitement in getting my Galaxy back. Well, I would like to point out just how convenient it is. It's so convenient that I'm writing this blog on my phone as well. I can be anywhere and can just pull out my phone and begin to blog. Before I got the Blogger app on my phone I would depend on my god awful memory to remember what I wanted to blog about. Now I blog as soon as I think about it, because blogger is now in my pocket.

I think part of the reason I find this so amazing is because I know journalists and professional bloggers use their mobile devices to do their jobs. Reporters even use their iPhones to do news stories now. With the availability of iMovie and other video editing apps, camera lenses you can attach to the iPhone camera and special iPhone/iPod tripods make it all possible.

In the Broadcasting/Multimedia Journalism department we've begun doing that for our practicum class. If there's a small news story we want to do we can use an iPod touch to film it and it'll be little difference from if we used an actual camera.

Social media and technology is in fact a fast paced and ever changing, and now I get it. If you're not a believer take a look at how things were last year and how they are now and you just might be surprised.

Black Jack

So it's finally happened, I finally turned 21. There's one thing that I noticed about turning 21, when people ask "How does it feel?" there's an actual feeling. Has anyone else been asked that question? The last 20 birthdays I hated that question because I always thought "What do you mean? I feel the same as I felt yesterday." But this year I felt different when I became a year older. I felt the satisfaction of being blessed to see the day that I turn 21, especially without getting an underage, and a headache that almost leaves you begging for death.

But anyway, I know if it weren't for my friends here my day of birth it wouldn't have been as great as it was. Two people specifically made it happen, Chem and Taylor. The two of them stayed by my side the entire night and put up with me being a diva and out of control and they showed no shame that they were associated with me. To them and everyone else who wished me happy birthday and celebrated with me I thank from the bottom of my heart.

Now it's officially safe to say that the streets of Ada are no longer safe with a 21 year old Darnell Sample walking around. So watch out y'all,  because this is just the quite before the storm.

Creeping To the Max

In this weeks reading of  Paine's Measure What Matters she spoke on measuring the things that you can't control. When I first started to read it I paused and thought about when my grandfather use to measure my height when I was a child. I like to think that that's remotely similar, but you can be the judge of that.

Paine told that the uncontrollable can be measured in five levels:

1. Lurking
2. Casual
3. Active
4. Committed 
5. Loyalists

As creepy as the word lurking is, lurking would actually be the equivalence to liking something on Facebook or retweeting a tweet and never really going back to give it a second look. So it's needless to say that there isn't much loyalty involved there.

The definition of casual engagement relates a little bit to the term itself, this is where one would download a video from Vimeo, Daily Motion, or most likely YouTube or following someone on Twitter or Instagram. It's important to keep in mind and measure the ratio of new and repeat visitors since this is typically where the relationship ends.

If you're like me and keep up with iFunny on the daily basis, or Twitter or another social media outlet, then you are performing active engagement. This is where you actually participating and using the tool. If I'm on iFunny and I see a picture that I find just down right hilarious then I'll download it, and share with my friends, either through social media or face to face. 

One reason why Facebook took MySpace off of the map is because the people who registered and made an account with Facebook were more satisifed with what Facebook had to offer. This is what's called committed engagement.Through active engagement you obtain loyalists who not only are committed to you by favoring what you have and what you have to offer, but also being active on your sight and coming on the daily basis. So, again, it would be like me with iFunny. It's important to understand loyalty because it's cruciacl to know what people think about your site, organization, and/or product.

These five levels of engagement, and engagement in general, is important to measure because it helps to build relationships, protect and promote your brand which can help make your products, orginazations, site, and/or all around reputation.

There's No Place Like Home

For those of you who didn't know I am from Philadelphia, West Philadelphia to be exact, born and raised, but the playground is not where I spent most of my days. I preferred to stay on the front step and let people flock to me. Anyway, if there is one thing I'm looking forward to more than my 21st birthday, which is November 13th so mark your calendars, is finally going back to Philly for the first time since the semester has started.

The closet I came to being in Philly is when Chem and I woke up one Saturday morning and decided to go to Pittsburgh just for the hell of it. But even then I was still at least six hours away. On a side note, it really bothers me that how far away Pittsburgh and Philly are. I know they're on opposite ends of the state, but six hours though? God could have did us a favor and made Pennsylvania just a tad bit smaller and give the rest of the state to Ohio, because lord knows Ohio needs it.

But back to business, every year when November hits my heart gets filled with more and more anxiety and excitement to finally return to the City of Brotherly Love. I can't wait to see my little wiener dog too, Mokito. He is the only animal in this world that I love equally as much as Meadowlark Lemon, every other animal falls short, way short, not even a measurement short.

Then, in respect to tradition, I'm heading straight to my best and oldest friend in the world house, Rick. Rick and I go all the way back to fourth grade and every time I come home he is the first friend I see when I get back and the last one I see before I leave. I love all of my friends equally, but Rick is the definition of a bro. Once we link back up we'll be like Rush Hour once again. Then I can go see Shanice, also my best friend and who I view as a sister, Deja, the Camilles', Onji, and the rest of my friends and family

Speaking of family, the biggest reason why I come home, to see my mommy, dad, and sister. Those three goofballs are the reasons why I work so hard and do what I do. Primarily my sister, not to say that I love her more than my parents because I love all three of them equally, I'm just closest with her and have the strongest connection. No matter how much she gets on my nerves, argues with me, and makes me want to strangle her, I can't wait to see that guber.

One thing I could never do is call Ada my home. I take the phrase, "Home is where your heart is," very seriously and as much as I love Ada and memories and friends I've made here, it'll never have my heart. Philadelphia has my heart and even though these next few weeks will be slow, it'll still be completely worth it once I finally make it home.

It's Finally Happened

As some of you may remember from last week, I wrote a post about my Galaxy and iPhone and how I wanted to go back to my Galaxy so bad. Well, just a few short days later while doing laundry and rocking out to some music, my iPhone falls out of my pocket, still attached to my headphones though thankfully. However, I made the fatal mistake of trying to be cool and pick up the phone by the headphones wire. Just a few inches off of the ground, the headphone input jack disconnects from the phone causing it to fall face first on the concrete floor of my basement's laundry room and completely shatter the screen.

Initially I was happy because I could finally go back to using my Galaxy and have no worries about my phone not doing what I want it to do. I would get all of my notifications as fast as I could blink, including the notification that I look forward to everyday, iFunny. By the way, if you're a friend of mine who doesn't look at iFunny on a regular basis, I don't what you're doing with yourself and our friendship is now in question. There was so much joy running through me that I completely forgot that I pulled an all nighter that night and felt like I slept for days. That was until it hit me that there were things about the iPhone that I'll actually miss.

For one, this might sound a little weird, but the thing that I'll miss the most is the "Places I've Pooped" app. This app dropped a pin where ever I was showing that was where I used the the bathroom. I could share it with my friends, tweet it, Facebook it, the whole nine yards. I never shared the app, but if we talk everyday then you know all about it.

Other things I'll miss is face timing with my sister. Before coming to college my sister and I were inseparable and never spent more than a week apart from one another, and even though it's been three years we still haven't adjusted to the change. Now even though my front camera didn't work I could still see her so it worked out for me anyway. I'll also miss the use of emojis and the flash alert I got when I received notifications. Other than that, there's nothing else that I'll miss about the thing. I can now go back to using my social media outlets the way I loved to do it before. And even to further show my happiness, I wrote this post on the Blogger app on my Galaxy.

Good day, people.

Would You Happen To Have the Time?

In this weeks reading of Measure What Matters, Paine spoke on perfect measures. There are seven steps one can take called, "the seven steps to perfect measure. Those seven steps are:

1. Define your goals and objectives
2. Define your environment
3. Define your investment
4. Determine your benchmark
5. Define your key performance indicators
6. Select the right measurement tools/vendors and collect data
7. Turn data into action

After completing the steps it's important to present your results to your supervisor, professionally and successfully. To be successful at this, you will need to use every persuasive bone you have in your body, doing so will give you more exposure to more major projects and tasks.Visuals, such as graphs and charts, are important when presenting results, and Paine also gave advice on a some key actions when presenting your results to your boss:

• Ask for money 
• Get commitment 
• Manage time 
• Buy influence
• Get outside help
• Just say no

Of those six key actions time management stuck out to me the most. Not just because it's the end of the semester and there seems to be not enough time in the day, but because literally everyone struggles with it. It's a key that is often overlooked when it shouldn't be. You can manage your time by making a deadline for your tasks, goals within that deadline, and making time efficient goals within those goals. Basically, time makes or breaks the entire operation, so if you don't have time you don't have anything.